Better With Penguins
by MacBedh
Summary: The MacGyver companion series to "The Penguin Guide to Gate Travel": an ongoing - probably - series of crackfic vignettes, to be blamed on the fic rush comm on LJ. Because everything is better with penguins.
1. Mutual Assistance

_This can't be explained, but perhaps it can be excused._

_I moderate a writers' comm on LJ, called fic_rush. We generally have one weekend a month in which we spend most of 48 hours writing, with hourly check-ins. During the check-ins, dreadful running jokes develop, and crackfic is frequently spawned in the final hours of the round._

_I eventually posted some of the crack to the MacGyver and crossover archives; and, to my astonishment, I was asked for more._

_So I expect this will be an ongoing series of vignettes. Heaven help us all._

_The parallel series to this one is "The Penguin Guide to Gate Travel", and you can find that under the Stargate heading, O Best Beloveds.  
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_'Beth  
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~ x ~

_This was written for the first severe outbreak of crackfic on the comm, in October of 2010. By the time the confetti settled, we had two different versions of the Doctor, plus companions, dealing with the Master's attempt to launch an invasion of mutant penguins armed with glowsticks. Avon and Vila got dragged in, as did Benton Fraser and Ray Vecchio of Due South. Alien fish were also involved.  
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_Okay, maybe you had to be there._

_Anyway. The Ming vase is the fault of the Master's sense of style._

_(No penguins were harmed in the writing of this fic.)_

~ x ~

**Mutual Assistance**

- x -**  
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It was no use. In the Stygian darkness of the bunker, MacGyver had managed to pick the locks of his manacles by touch, but he knew the bomb would go off soon and without some source of light, he couldn't defuse it. Heck, he was having trouble just _finding_ it.

_How come that weird guy with the beard had to fill the whole darned bunker with clocks? I can't tell one source of ticking from another . . . _

Groping, his fingers brushed feathers, and the strangely alien smell of fish and the annoyed peck at his hand told him he'd found the penguin cage_. At least you guys might get away in time . ._ . he quickly located the lock, felt his way through the mechanism, felt it spring open, stepped aside as the cage door swung open. He could hear the slap of small webbed feet and the soft rustle as the birds waddled out.

Another peck at his leg made him yelp. One of the birds was right next to him, and he didn't dare move for fear of stepping on it in the dark – no wait, it had something in its beak, and it was nudging him. He reached down and felt a long plastic cylinder shoved into his hand.

A glowstick. Penguins with glowsticks?

_Whatever_. "Thanks, little buddy." Mac cracked the stick. The horde of penguins hopped away from him, clearing the way to the table where the bomb sat. He could see one of them was up on the table, fishing wires out of the casing with its beak. It looked up at him and squawked emphatically.

"On my way, just need to grab something . . . " he snatched the nearest of the large ticking clocks from the side table next to the Ming vase – _who the heck keeps Ming vases in bunkers?_ – and hastily dismantled it. One of the gears was thick enough to serve as a screwdriver; once he had the casing open, the long hour hand had a decorative metal frill that made it easier to hook out the wire to the detonator. While he was looking around for something sharp enough to cut the wire, the penguin squawked again and bit right through it.

"Yikes! Careful!" To his relief, the bird didn't seem to have been badly hurt by the electric current, although it shuffled its feet and _orked_ at him.

A few more minutes' work was enough to make sure all the triggers were neutralised. By the time Mac was finished, the bunker was empty except for himself and the last penguin, which regarded him with its bright black eyes.

"I guess your buddies all found a way out." Mac tried not to feel self-conscious at having a conversation with a bird. He picked it up cautiously, wary of further bites, but it settled comfortably into the crook of his arm as he headed for the exit from the bunker.

_No way Pete is gonna buy __any__ of this when I try to tell him . . . _

_~ x ~  
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	2. Fishcake and Beefcake

~ x ~

_From November of 2010. For once, penguins were in short supply, but the alien fish and the glowsticks were still around. That weekend saw an outbreak of threats to handcuff various characters to beds, with or without their clothes, with or without chocolate cake - it had something to do with Thanskgiving, I think._

_No, it didn't make any better sense at the time._

~ x ~

**Fishcake, Beefcake**

- x -

"It's for your own good," Nikki said reassuringly.

MacGyver glared at her and yanked on the cuffs that held him to the bed. "Easy for you to say! You could at least have left me my clothes!"

"Nope. The lab folks are having way too much fun trying to analyse the fish DNA they found on your jeans." Her voice dropped. "They say it's like nothing they've ever seen before! The head ichthyologist is saying it looks _alien_."

"Aw, don't give me that! Who ever heard of alien fish?"

"You did say the fish looked weird."

"Well, yeah. They were all luminescent blue, kind of like glowsticks. And sometimes it was hard to focus on them, like they weren't really there. And when I tried to touch one, it _wasn't _there – my hand went right through it." He made a face. "It was really creepy."

Nikki spotted Mac's fingers inching towards the bedside clock and quickly moved it out of reach. She couldn't imagine how he could have possibly picked the locks of his cuffs with an alarm clock, but with MacGyver, you never knew.

Mac glowered at the clock, now an impossible two feet away. Nikki smiled. "Relax, MacGyver. We just need to make sure there are no ill after-effects."

She stepped out of his field of vision, and he craned his head, trying to see what she was up to. Getting him a blanket, he hoped, or _something_ to cover him . . . she was on her way back now, and she _was_ carrying something, but it wasn't a blanket. And Mac didn't like the gleeful expression on her face.

"Nikki! What the heck is that _cake_ for?" He yanked on the cuffs again, this time in desperation. If only she hadn't chained his feet as well . . .

She beamed, dipped a finger in the frosting, licked it off. "Chocolate's my favourite, MacGyver." She set the plate carefully on the bedside table, just out of reach, and dipped her finger again. "Let's see, where to start . . . ?"

_~ x ~  
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	3. Icebreaker

_From the March 2011 round of fic_rush, in which the penguins progressed from drinking games to outright drunkeness and starting getting rowdy:_

~ x ~

**Icebreaker**

- x -

"Uh . . . . Pete, I don't even drink. What did you say the rules are?"

Pete Thornton lowered his voice. "That's the whole problem, Mac. As far as I can tell, the rules change with every round. Sometimes in mid-round." Pete was having trouble getting the words to come out clearly; the drinking game had started several hours ago, and he'd been losing ground.

Still, others were worse off. Around the table, small beady eyes glittered, flippers pushed the bottles from one place to the next, beaks dipped into glasses. Three of the penguins had passed out, four were playing complicated percussive rhythms with glowsticks, and two were dancing on the table to the thin clattering beat. At the far end, three were passing the same piece of paper from hand to hand, scribbling furiously; each time the paper changed hands, a particularly bulbous robin tried to steal it, and one of the penguins smacked it with another glowstick.

Pete lost his round, took another drink, and turned into a penguin again.

Mac shook his head and blinked. "Whoa. Just how long did the doctor say it would take before this stuff wore off?"

_~ x ~_


	4. Punchline

_~ x ~_

_From the August round of Fic_Rush, in which ninja animals figured prominently._

~ x ~

**Punchline**

- x -

MacGyver, Pete Thornton, and the Lady Scientist of the Week walked into a bar.

The barman glared at them. "Is this some kind of a joke?" He handed a beer to Pete and a glass of tomato juice to Mac, then poured three shotglasses of whiskey for the Lady Scientist of the Week.

Dr. Week shook her head. "Just two glasses, Fred."

The barman met her gaze with a sorrowful expression. "But you always have three drinks – one for yourself and one for each of your two brothers, who are fighting the Forces of Evil overseas. You don't mean to tell me – "

"Oh, they're both fine," Pete interrupted.

Dr. Week nodded. "I've quit drinking is all." She downed both of her brothers' drinks and then joined Pete and Mac at a table in the dimly-lit recesses of the bar.

Mac was already in earnest conversation with their contact, Dr. Li, an attaché from the Chinese Embassy. "So you're sayin' the scroll was safely locked up in its case when you all went to bed last night?"

Dr. Li looked inscrutable.

"Aw, cut it out," said Mac. "We're tryin' to cut back on the ethnic clichés."

"I beg your pardon," said Dr. Li, looking contrite.

"Much better." Mac reached over the the next table, collected half a dozen unmarked bottles of sauces and flavourings and poured random amounts of each into his glass of tomato juice. The glass fizzed.

Pete Thornton cleared his throat. "Is it time for the expository lump now?"

"Go for it," MacGyver said cheerfully.

"Right. Dr. Li, you told us that the priceless antique scroll had disappeared from its locked cabinet overnight, and in its place was a different scroll, filled with strange pictures instead of magnificent specimens of T'ang Dynasty calligraphy."

"Very strange pictures. The first image was of a ninja aardvark, followed by a ninja bat, a ninja capybara, and a ninja dodo."

"I'm beginning to see a pattern here," said Mac.

"Well, duh," said Dr. Week. "Is it time for me to be kidnapped at gunpoint yet? This is getting dull."

"Not till just before the first commercial break," Pete replied. "Go on, Dr. Li."

"Let's see – after that, it got a little more complicated. There was a ninja elephant and a ninja flamingo – "

"Whoa!" Mac waggled a finger. "If you recite the whole danged line-up, the narrative is gonna slow down to a crawl."

"The ninja sloths did that already."

Pete nodded. "Please, Dr. Li. Just give us the high points."

Dr. Li cleared his throat. "Um, the ninja lemurs were very cute. But the ninja jellyfish quite disrupted the celestial harmony of the scroll."

Pete was scowling. "It doesn't make sense. Why no penguins?"

Mac shrugged. "Even penguins need a vacation." He suddenly reached out, grabbed Dr. Week by the hand and dragged her off her chair onto the floor as a shot rang out over their heads. The mirror above the bar shattered, the glass falling with a musical crash underscoring the sudden dramatic build of the background music. Pete and Dr. Li ducked under the table.

MacGyver peeked over the table, reached up and snatched his glass of quietly fizzing liquid, and lobbed it at the shadowy figure that could be seen at the entrance to the bar. The glass exploded in a completely unrealistic fireball, and the defeated evildoer fled.

Pete peered out cautiously. "Was that Murdoc?"

"Naw, we tangled with him only two weeks ago. Remember? He ended up electrocuted, strangled, stabbed with his own knife, shot with his own gun, and poisoned by the spines of a ninja sea urchin. Then he fell to his death from a great height. He won't be back till next season."

"Oh. Right." Pete stood up carefully, brushed the dirt off his suit and straightened his tie. "Now what?"

"Now all we need is the punch line." Mac looked expectantly at Dr. Li. "I gotta ask. How did that ninja animal alphabet deal with the letter X?"

They heard a disturbance at the doorway. A xylophagus ninja xerus, a xanthic ninja xukazi, a xenophobic ninja _xenopus laevis_, a xenophilic ninja _xantusia riversiana_ and a xeric ninja xiaosaurus all walked into the bar, stopping to admire the aquarium with its ninja _xiphias __gladius_ and its ninja _xiphophorus helleri_, and stepping carefully to avoiding the ninja xanthidae scuttling across the floor. They all ducked to avoid the ninja xenops that flew at their heads, flanked by a ninja xami hairstreak butterfly and a ninja Xerces blue.

The barkeeper glared at the menagerie. "Awright, you smartasses. You've made your point."

_~ x ~_


End file.
